In her post entitled, "Finally, a Facebook for Republican Campaign Donors," Sarah Lai Stirland of Wired has reported on the launch of Slatecard.

Of particular interest is her noting the practice of what we'd consider "baby bundling" and our thoughts on how a conservative General like Rush Limbaugh might use the site:

All and Panchadsaram hope that Slatecard's features will thrust their site into the center of young Republicans' online social-networking activities, and trigger widespread "bundling."

Bundling is when a politically active voter rounds up his or her friends to donate to a favored candidate -- an old practice that's been boosted to heroic levels by e-mail and online social-networking tools. Bundlers have helped Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama raise record amounts online this year.

The idea behind Slatecard is that Republican voters will come to the site to register their choices of political candidates all the way from the top -- whom they support for president -- down to municipal dogcatcher, says All.

Voters who haven't decided whom they support yet can use Slatecard as a springboard to candidates' social-networking sites, and find out more about those candidates and their supporters. Or, they can look at the voting preferences of friends or public figures who've registered on Slatecard, to see whom they have endorsed.

"Our hope is that someone like Rush Limbaugh would create a Slatecard, and then all of his audience would go to his Slatecard and support the candidates that he supports," All says.

Voters can also create "issue buttons" and slap them on the profiles of candidates they give money to. On Monday, for example, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's profile shows that his "most-received issue badges" are "Social Centrist" and "Stop Hillary."

Bloggers are invited to put widgets on their blogs to funnel potential donors to Slatecard. The site's motto: "It's fun to give right!"

One piece of the story which I want to address are Julie Germany's thoughts on how Slatecard may be mimicked, rather than fully embraced by candidates:

Julie Germany, acting director of George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, theorizes that Republicans haven't seen as much success in online fundraising as Democrats because of their desire to retain control of the information that's generated from online activities.

"In the last election cycle, we saw the Democrats use community-driven technology such as MeetUp.com," she says. "Republican (candidates) have tended to develop their own in-house platforms to stay in control" of their donor lists.

She predicts that the Republican presidential campaigns will watch Slatecard's progress, and then mimic it.

"I expect that the presidential campaigns will look at this and try to do this on their own," says Germany, "to see who's donating, who the friends are, how much they're donating and how often."

Why re-invent the wheel? Why develop a platform this late in the game when those development resources could go to advertising their message. Donations come in through Slatecard and then arrive at the campaign in the form of a check for deposit quickly. 

However, we get it. We understand the value this issue information will be to candidates who are deciding what their next piece of direct mail to donors should be.

In fact, we're already thinking creatively about how to give those candidates who use the Slatecard utility as their primary mode of accepting online transactions access to the data. And we expect to give all candidates more control over their profile in the very near future.

In a sense, we're Republicans who want to see Republicans get ahead. That's why we're here and while we'll continue to provide this service to our Party's candidates.